


all i want is to want nothing

by orphan_account



Category: Bandom, The Front Bottoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-28 09:09:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5086213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Truthfully, Mat just wishes Brian was there. Then again, Mat always wishes Brian was there.</p><p>(or, a lame ass high school au, because why not?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title is from “tattooed tears” by tfb (my babes), and there are more notes at the end! :^)

Mat has always liked Brian best like this: hazy, evening sunlight gleaming in the golden flecks of his eyes, and tree branches casting shadows on the slopes of his face and neck and arms, no sound between them, save for the gentle lapping of water against the shore of the pond. They’ve been coming here since they were kids; it almost feels like a third home, because, of course, the Sella house is Mat’s second. They bike the distance from their respective houses, pedaling until they eventually skid into the underbrush and are forced to continue on foot to their little oasis, hidden away in the thick of the woods. There, they sit cross-legged on the shore, sometimes talking, sometimes smoking, but _always_ together. It’s a slice of heaven in their otherwise dull lives.

Some nights, when summer seeps through their clothes and makes the fabric of them cling to their skin with sweat, they strip to their underwear and run off a dock belonging to one of the surrounding houses, splashing into the cool and forgiving water, but tonight’s _different_. They’re watching the sun go down in silence, and Mat’s not even bothering to swat away the mosquitoes as they bite at the exposed skin on his arms, and he’s still thinking about how beautiful Brian looks, all lit up like this and glowing, when he suddenly passes the joint in his hand to Mat. It makes him jump.

“Tomorrow’s going to be so fucking weird, man.”

The words roll off of Brian’s tongue lazily as he lies down onto his back, and Mat silently thanks the smoke in his lungs for allowing him a few seconds before he has to respond. He sounds nonchalant, but Mat knows that he means what he’s saying; Brian’s careful with his words, in spite of the stupid shit they both know he does. They’re just about the only thing he’s careful with.

“Good weird, though, right?” he asks, but he can feel his heart rising into his throat as the words come out of his mouth. Normally, he would’ve laid down beside Brian, fitted himself against the curves of his body, arm against arm, hip against hip, endless points of contact running all the way down their sides, but he’s motionless now. He ignores the way he can feel Brian staring at him and focuses instead on how the water of the pond moves towards them, then away, then towards them again, over and over and over.

It jolts him back to reality when Brian says, “Guess so. D’you think so?”

“It’s your last first day of high school, Bri. ‘Course I think so. It’s about as ‘good weird’ as you can get.”

Brian laughs, and Mat doesn’t know if it’s with him or at him, but he thinks it sounds holy. He tries to sneak a glance back at Brian, but all he gets is a smile, and then Brian’s gripping the sleeve of Mat’s t-shirt and pulling him, and they’re both sprawled on the sand, limbs tangled together and their joint dropped and lost in the commotion. He calls him an asshole and elbows him in his ribs, but he doesn’t mean any of it, and Brian knows it, too, because he just keeps laughing. _Please, God_ , Mat prays to the sound of his laughter, _find me a way out of this tonight_. He doesn’t get a response, and the feeling in his chest doesn’t go away; it never does.

Eventually, his laughter subsides, and then, it’s just the two of them, lying there, Brian’s arm looped around Mat’s neck, Mat’s foot hooked around Brian’s calf. It feels a little bit like home. Once the silence has hung thick in the air for a minute (or maybe two, he’s not really keeping track), Brian says, “You don’t have to be so weird about it, y’know.”

“It?”

“All of it.”

He doesn’t have to ask what Brian what he means.

“I’m not being weird about anything,” he mumbles, and he knows he’s lying through his teeth when he does. Hell, he knows _Brian_ knows he’s lying. They know each other a little too well, and that’s almost to be expected after seven years of friendship, but he always feels so _exposed_ when it comes to his best friend. There’s a special type of vulnerability that the two of them share with each other, and Mat’s never known what to do with it but bury it under layers of shitty jokes and cheap beer and smoke rising in their lungs. Never acknowledge it, never give it the dignity of being brought it out into the open, he thinks, and everything will be okay; he can keep pretending Brian doesn’t know him better than he knows himself.

“If you say so.”

He feels Brian sigh before he hears it, his breath warm and familiar on the skin of his neck, and then, a split-second later, the sound of something tired and just a little bit exasperated hits him. In the time they’ve been there, the sky has darkened from blue to orange to dusky pink to a deep purply-gray, and now the first stars are glittering behind the clouds. The longer they lay together, the bigger the lump in Mat’s throat grows, and he knows that they can’t stay there forever. He’d like to, sure; he’d _love_ to never leave, to carve out their own little forever in the place between the trees and where the water laps against the shore, but all they’d be doing then would be prolonging the inevitable, and he knows they can’t do that. He knows _he_ can’t do that.

They untangle themselves from each other a little while later, their footsteps heavy as they clamber blindly through the woods to where they left their bikes. All Mat thinks about the whole ride home is the way Brian skidded to a stop at the opposite end of the street, grinned back at him, and shouted, “You’re my best friend, Mathew Uychich!” before taking off again. He’d stood and watched him pedal away until he wasn’t sure anymore which speck in the darkness was Brian.

He hopes the whole neighborhood heard him.

**-:-**

Nothing remotely memorable happens until Mat’s second period. Like any other school day, he’s mostly focused on just getting through it until lunch, when he can see Brian again and they can ditch the cafeteria and hide out under the bleachers together, but then his English teacher—young and perky and obviously new to her profession—forces everyone into a ‘getting to know you’ game that they don’t really want to play, and it throws off everything. They’re supposed to find a partner and ask them a series of questions, then tell the class their answers. He’s always hated the way these games work, no matter the subtle differences among them, so Mat makes no movement to pair up with anyone, wondering idly if the teacher would object to him partnering up with someone in a different class entirely. Then again, as he glances over the questions, he figures he could probably answer every last one _for_ Brian without asking him any at all.

He keeps thumbing through the packet of questions, occasionally mumbling one or two of them to himself, until finally a tall boy bounces up to the desk in front of his, sits himself down, and says, “We’re going to be partners. ‘Kay?” From the looks of it, he’s not particularly interested in the assignment either; if anything seems indicative of that, beelining for the one kid actively trying not to partner up with anyone does.

Mat doesn’t respond, verbally or otherwise, but the boy just steams right ahead. In a matter of seconds, he learns that his name is Jack, and that he’s pissed off that his best friend, a boy named Alex, isn’t answering his texts, and that he’s _supposed_ to be a senior, but he failed a couple of grades, so now he’s stuck with ‘little baby sophomores’ in ‘little baby sophomore classes’. Mat tries not to feel offended over that while Jack tries to reassure Mat that he’s not stupid—just lazy. Part of him wants to ask what the difference is, but he stays quiet. In all of his fifteen years, Mat doesn’t think he’s ever heard one person say so much in so little time, never mind the fact that it’s not even nine in the morning yet.

Truthfully, Mat just wishes Brian was there. Then again, Mat always wishes Brian was there.

Finally, somewhere around three or four minutes into his chatter, Jack finishes, and Mat thinks he might have whiplash. There’s a moment of silence, of reprieve, before a look of confusion dawns on the other boy, and he asks, “What’s your name, again?”

“I never said it in the first place. It’s Mat.”

“Oh, right. Hi, Mat. I’m Jack. Barakat.”

Mat can’t help but snort a little bit before he says, “Yeah, I know. You already told me.” Jack starts babbling about their assignment then, obviously embarrassed, but he’s stopped paying attention to him altogether. He doesn’t even bother to check if the teacher’s watching before pulling his phone out of his pocket to see if Brian’s texted him yet. English just seems trivial and unnecessary when he considers the fact that he wants to spend the rest of his life making music, not… reading books, or whatever the hell it is that English majors actually do. School itself seems trivial, and when the screen of his phone shows that he has not one, but three, new text messages from Brian, it seems even _less_ important.

_**From: Bri Bear (3 minutes ago)** : How’s english treating ya bud??_

_**From: Bri Bear (1 minute ago)** : I forgot I have fiorello for gov and it’s killing me lol_

_**From: Bri Bear (just now)** : sos!!!!! :(_

He’s starting to type out a response—something vaguely poetic and clearly stupid and optimistically flirty about them rescuing _each other_ from their shitty classes—when Jack interrupts him, “Why are you smiling like that, dude? Is that your girlfriend or something?”

There’s part of him that kind of wants to laugh at the notion of him ever having a girlfriend, but he knows that Jack doesn’t know any better. Really, Jack doesn’t know him at all, and normally, a stranger—especially one as _annoying_ as this one—asking him personal questions like that would bother him. Right now, though, he just glances up at him and shrugs as noncommittally as he can bring himself to, the ghost of a smile still on his mouth.

“Yeah. Or something.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, y’all! as you probably figured out, i’m sellachich trash, and this is a high school au bc… why not :^) i’m also just general bandom trash, though, so some other kids (...like jack and alex from all time low) will be popping up as well :^) i feel like this is super short for a first chapter and doesn’t do much other than kind of sort of set up/introduce u to the situation/kids (mostly mat...), but! :^) i promise it gets better! ty for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

They’re like a bad indie movie, the way they’re sitting cross-legged together beneath the metal bleachers during lunch, Brian trying desperately to blow smoke rings while Mat just _watches_ him. He’s pretty certain that if Brian took a good look at him right now, at how his eyes are gleaming with just a little bit more than friendship, he’d know exactly how he feels about him, but he’s busy, and Mat’s grateful for it.

Mat’s phone is out and laid on top of his backpack, resting in the dead grass between them. Jesse Lacey’s voice is singing into the pair of earbuds they’re sharing (but, given that it’s _Your Favorite Weapon_ they’re listening to at the moment, it’s really more shouting than singing). The breeze in the air is breaking up the sticky summer heat, and all of the irritation Mat’s been feeling from second period onward has all but melted away. Everything feels a little too perfect for the first day of school, and part of him wishes that they could do this all afternoon, but he’ll settle for fifty-two minutes.

Brian manages to blow a perfect ring at the exact moment their song changes, the sound of ‘Jesus Christ’ dissonant with ‘Seventy Times 7’, but still good. He’s already expecting the impact of Brian throwing his arm around him, laughing and mumbling about how he _told_ Mat he could do it. Somehow, it still manages to knock the wind out of him when it happens.

He’d never really doubted Brian in the first place, of course, but it’s not like either of them would ever pass up the opportunity to give the other hell. When Mat got his ear pierced, Brian dedicated a solid ten minutes to trying to figure out exactly which one was the _gay_ ear. (If Mat remembers correctly, it’s the right one.) When Brian got his growth spurt in ninth grade and shot upwards three-quarters of a foot, Mat spent the whole year cracking jokes about how much nicer the weather must be up there. And, just ten minutes ago, as he had ranted and raved about how he could most definitely blow a smoke ring, but failed to perform, Mat had told Brian that he was full of shit.

He is full of shit, though. He might have been right about this particular thing—just like he _always_ is—but Mat was right, too.

“So, are you going to get off of me, or do I have to make you?” he asks, false annoyance laced in his voice.

Brian doesn’t hesitate at all before saying, “Make me.” Mat’s not sure, but he almost thinks that Brian pushes even _more_ of his weight onto him then. Mostly, he just feels a little dizzy, and he prays that Brian doesn’t notice the blush creeping up his neck and spilling onto his cheeks.

_I don’t want to_ , he thinks, but it’s not until he registers the grin on Brian’s face that he realizes that the words left his mouth. _Oh_. Brian mumbles something in a low voice that he doesn’t quite catch, and then it’s like the air around him turns into molasses, thick and slow and heavy with silence. Mat thinks it’s going to suffocate him, but Brian just keeps smiling; he can’t quite figure out why. His confusion doesn’t last too long, though, because sooner, rather than later, the sound of a familiar voice and footsteps approaching hits him.

“‘Sup, boners? Thought I’d find you here.”

Josh is two years older than Mat—the same age as Brian—and they’ve hung out together, collectively, more than once, but he’s never felt comfortable calling the two of them friends. If anything, he bridges the gap separating acquaintance and friend: not quite one or the other, but somewhere in between the two. Brian likes him, though, which means Mat does, too.

“C’mon, Josh, can’t you see we’re busy here?” Brian asks. His laugh is so infectious that Mat can’t help but chuckle along with him.

Josh just shakes his head and says, “I’m not trying to interrupt your lunchtime quickie, man. Don’t shoot the messenger.” Mat forces a laugh. A moment later, Josh is sitting beside them, completing their little circle around Mat’s backpack. He grabs one of the earbuds lying forgotten on the ground and presses it into his ear, but after a few seconds, he picks up Mat’s phone and just turns the music off altogether.

He’s not really sure exactly what Josh means, but Brian must, because he sits up, pulling away from Mat as he does, and quips back, “Depends on who the message is from.” Adjusting himself accordingly, Mat pulls his knees up to his chest tightly and rests his chin on top of them.

“Who do you think?” Josh looks at Brian dubiously before he continues, “Brendon’s throwing a party this weekend—something about showing Ryan he’s okay—and he wanted me to make sure you guys are coming.”

Mat interjects for the first time then, “He’s throwing a party for his ex-boyfriend?” Brendon and Ryan’s relationship had seemed messy to Mat from the very beginning, but he remembers their break-up over the summer being particularly brutal. Hardly anyone’s even heard from Ryan since. Mat doesn’t quite blame him, though.

“Well… not _just_ for his ex-boyfriend. He also mentioned something about fucking with a bunch of ‘obnoxious freshmen’. His words, not mine.”

It takes Mat just a moment too long to realize that Josh doesn’t mean that Brendon wants to have sex with fourteen-year-olds.

“And he couldn’t wait to ask me in seventh period?”

Brendon and Brian have been in a music theory class together for the past three years, and that’s where most of their stupider ideas flesh themselves out into real plans. Mat doesn’t know the full story of how Brendon broke his ankle back in their sophomore year—he was _still_ in middle school when it happened, an eighth grader desperate to be in high school with the rest of his friends—but he’s gleaned that whatever it was that they were doing was plotted in music theory. Needless to say, neither of them ever get much done in there, as far as _actual_ classwork is concerned.

“Guess not,” Josh says with a shrug. He laughs then, and Mat’s fairly sure it’s not at either of them. With the sole exception of Ryan, no one they know has ever really understood Brendon in any meaningful way; laughing your way through it is pretty much the only way anyone can survive being friends with him. Even Mat knows that. “So, are you coming?” They nod in silent unison, but he looks a little skeptical.

Once Brian has satisfactorily assured Josh that they’ll both be there, the conversation turns to the freshmen Brendon wants to— Well, Mat’s not actually entirely sure _what_ Brendon wants to do to them. He tunes out after a few minutes, but he what he gathers is that some kid—tall and blonde and named _Louis or Lucas or something_ , according to Josh—wronged Brendon in some unspecified, but indiscriminate way. Now, he’s determined to exact revenge by… inviting him and his friends to a party.

Mat doesn’t really get it. 

Honestly, he doesn’t think he’ll _ever_ get Brendon. That’s not going to stop him from partying with him, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like this ended a lil awkwardly, so, sorry for that! :^) if yr reading this, i hope yr halloween was a+


	3. Chapter 3

Mat thinks he’s starting to get it when they pull up to Brendon’s house on Friday night in Brian’s beat-up ‘98 Buick Century. It’s barely nine o’clock when they arrive, but the house already looks irreparably trashed, and suddenly, he thinks that maybe all Brendon’s trying to do is scare _Louis or Lucas or whatever the hell the kid’s name actually is_. There’s no doubt in his mind that he would’ve been scared if he’d been invited to a party even remotely like this last year, even with Brian at his side.

A rap song he doesn’t recognize seems to be vibrating the entire house—an impressive feat in and of itself—and people are flooded out onto the front porch already, as if there’s not enough room indoors to contain all of them. Underneath the buzz of the music, he thinks he can faintly hear the sound of people in the swimming pool out back. It’s a rager if he’s ever seen one, but he can’t figure out how Brendon managed to pull it off.

Regardless, it’s a little infuriating that, when he looks at Brian, obviously skeptical of the situation unfolded before them, Brian just shrugs and says, “Showtime.” It’s like nothing can faze him, his grin unaffected and carefree as he clambers out of the driver’s seat of his car and onto the driveway. Mat follows close behind—as always. The night is warm and humid, but not quite sticky-hot, and the streetlights are casting a kind of ethereal glow over the whole place that makes Mat feel like someone’s rigged them all up just for the two of them. As they pass the one in front of Brendon’s house, the light of it creates a sort of golden halo around Brian’s curls. It makes him look divine—like an angel.

It’s not Brendon, but Josh, who meets them at the door, a grin plastered on his face and a red, plastic cup of some unspecified liquor in his hand. As he pulls Brian into a sloppy half-hug, some of it sloshes onto the back of his shirt, but neither of them seem to notice, and when Mat tries to pat the wetness away with the sleeve of his sweater, both glance at him like he’s suddenly started doing backflips across the yard.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, shoving his hands awkwardly into his pockets. His sleeves are too long for his arms, and they bunch up at the spot cotton meets denim. That’s the way he likes all of his clothes: comfortably too large. It started as stealing Brian’s clothes during sleepovers at the Sella house and never giving them back to him, but at some point, it just became something quintessentially _Mat_.

Five minutes later, as they shuffle through the mass of people populating the living room in an attempt to get to the kitchen (more accurately, to the _booze_ ), Mat hears Brian say, “I think I’m wet!” Josh wolf-whistles crudely in response, and Brian cracks back, “Oh, shut the fuck up.”

“Stop being gross, guys,” Mat murmurs as he moves into the space between Josh and Brian, rather than lag behind the two of them. He’s pretty certain they can’t hear him over the music and conversation, but they quiet down anyway as they enter the kitchen. Laid out on the glittering granite island is an array of different bottles, most of which have been opened. Only a few are empty, though, but Brian all but beelines for the cardboard case of Coors Light on the counter.

“Oh, come on. You’ve got all the liquor you could want in front of you, and you go for the shitty college beer?” Josh doesn’t sound particularly impressed, and he takes a disapproving sip of whatever’s in his cup.

It’s like a shot through Mat’s heart when Brian responds, “Well, you know, I better get used to the taste of aluminum and piss now, right? ‘Cause I’ve only got a year left of boozy high school smorgasbords, courtesy of the Uries.”

A split-second of silence passes before Josh laughs. Mat just reaches towards the island, grabbing the neck of whatever he comes in contact with first. That turns out to be a half-full bottle of Jose Cuervo, and while he’s not normally wont to drinking tequila, anything is better than listening to Brian talk about his plans for college—the plans that very specifically don’t involve him.

There’s a laugh laced in Brian’s voice when he says, “Hey, Mat. Matty. Mathew. Buddy. Man. Sir. Dude. Bro. Best fri—” The look Mat gives him causes him to cut off his litany of pet names abruptly. “While you’re pouring yourself that, you mind getting me a cup of water?” He just nods and hopes that he’s okay with tap water, because that’s what Mat passes him. At the very least, he _looks_ grateful.

Josh and Brian talk a few minutes longer about nothing in particular, chuckles intermingled with their small talk, but when Mat looks up from pouring the amber tequila into a plastic cup, it’s just him and Brian left in the kitchen.

“Where did—” he starts to ask, but then, as if in response to him, a high-pitched voice resonates from down the hall, and he can hear Josh laughing, and he already knows the answer.

They say it unison: “ _Tyler_.”

Brian just rolls his eyes and slides his arm languidly around Mat’s shoulders, like that’s where it’s always supposed to be. In one hand, he has a cup of water, neither hot nor cold, and in the other, a can of warm beer. They’re not exactly the greatest beverages in the world, yet he still seems content. Mat can’t tell if it’s because of the party or something else, but there’s part of him that hopes it’s because of him.

He lets him lead him back towards the living room, and on their way, they narrowly sidestep a girl sitting cross-legged against the wall, looking a little too woozy for this early in the night. It only stands out to Mat because of the way Brian pulls him even closer to avoid her.

It’s the little victories.

There’s a moment where Mat thinks Brian is considering pulling him into the throng of awkwardly dancing bodies in front of them, their drinks be damned, but thankfully, he chooses to steer him towards the sofa—wide and L-shaped and, on one end, occupied with a couple unabashedly making out—and sit them both heavily onto it. Brian’s water is retired to the coffee table, and his beer is opened, and then his can is clinked against Mat’s cup in a toast, though he’s not quite sure what it is that they’re toasting.

“To…” Brian trails off. “What should we toast?”

“Rock and roll. To rock and roll,” Mat says with a snort, leaning his head against Brian’s broad shoulder. He takes a sip of his tequila, and any flavor it might have is lost in the burn in his throat.

Brian simply echoes him, and if Mat looks hard, he thinks he can see him smiling out of the corner of his eye.

**-:-**

Mat—forever the lightweight—starts feeling loose almost as soon as the ache in his throat from his first sip has gone, but Brian seems entirely himself when he pops up from the couch to get another round from the kitchen. His first beer and his water are both drunk to the last drop, their respective containers sitting forgotten on the Uries’ coffee table.

Twenty minutes later, he still hasn’t returned to the couch. Mat leaves his half-full cup with Brian’s empty one when he gets up to look for him.

“Bri?” he says to no one. His voice feels scratchy and wrong coming out of his mouth, and he knows he’s not quite drunk, but something about the bad feeling he’s getting in his stomach tells him he should be for whatever’s coming.

He doesn’t get a response.

What feels like a century later, but is probably a matter of minutes, Mat finds him on the back porch. He’s sprawled out in a chair that his limbs are too long for, and a guitar that’s not familiar to Mat is in Brian’s lap, not being played, and the smell of weed is thick in the air. The girl in the seat beside Brian’s is pretty— _too_ pretty, the exact kind of pretty that Brian likes, with her curly hair and loose tank-top and denim shorts—and the way she’s smiling at him makes Mat feel a little sick.

_It’s not like I blame her, though_. The thought swims in his head, makes his eyes water a little bit, and then it’s promptly forced onto the back burner of his brain when she speaks.

“Hey, Bri, do you know him?” Even her voice is fucking pretty.

Brian looks a little surprised, though it’s not clear what at, and then he turns to look at Mat, and the way his smile just _dawns_ on him, out of nowhere, is beautiful. “Oh. Hey! Hey, Mat. Sor—”

His voice comes out a little more clipped than he intended it to when he says, “Don’t worry about it.” It’s not like it’s Brian’s fault that a girl thinks he’s… well, _Brian_. Talented and good-looking and tall and funny and probably a million other things on top of that that Mat’s forgetting.

“Oh. Okay, well, I’m jus—”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll let you get back to…” He just gestures at Brian and the girl and tries his best to shrug with as much nonchalance as he can muster—which, at this point, isn’t very much. A casual attitude is hard to fake when tipsy, when upset, and when both tipsy _and_ upset. Leaving him on the porch with his guitar and his girl and his ganja, Mat turns on his heel to go back inside. As far as he knows, Brian doesn’t try to follow him; he’s almost grateful for that.

He makes a stop to the kitchen, grabbing the Jose Cuervo bottle while there, and from there, he heads to the basement. He figures Brendon’s lair is as good a place as any to brood.

**-:-**

He hears Brendon before he sees him.

It’s maybe an hour later when he hears “Lucas!” Brendon’s shouting over the thrum of music and conversation, pushing through a loosely-packed throng of teenagers, but Mat would recognize his voice anywhere. It takes him a moment of searching the crowd—significantly smaller in the basement than on the main floor, but still large—to distinguish who Brendon’s trying to reach, but then he notices a blonde boy towering awkwardly over _everyone_. With Josh’s words swimming in his alcohol-addled brain—‘ _tall and blonde and named Louis or Lucas or something_ ’—it’s only a few seconds later that he makes the connection.

The boy tries to correct him mid-sentence: “It’s actually just Luke.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t do accomplish much by way of interrupting Brendon, and Mat can’t help but feel a little bad for him from where he’s seated on the ratty sofa, retrieved from a half-hearted dumpster dive, a few feet away.

“So glad you could make it!” Brendon continues, “And you brought friends. Hey, Lucas number two through…” He trails off then to count on his fingers exactly how many friends Luke has brought with him; his drunkenness is already bleeding into his actions. It’s only three, but counting Luke with them makes— “…four.”

Luke’s entourage is just as gangly as he is, and there’s a moment of hesitation before any of them offer up their names in response to being referred as extensions of their friend. To his immediate right, standing a little too closely, is a boy with a deep tan and a striped tank-top on. Mat’s pretty sure he’s trying to appear casual, but just the suggestion of effort ruins the whole effect. A pale boy with lime green hair is on Luke’s left, his arms crossed and his brows stitched together in what appears to be concentration, and he looks to be the shortest of the group, if only by a couple inches. A fourth boy, his curly hair sandy brown and looking like it hasn’t made contact with a brush in weeks, rounds out their quartet. They look _average_ , which isn’t a surprise. They’re only freshmen.

“My name’s actually Mikey,” the pale one pipes up. “Not Lucas number four.” His voice simmers with exasperation, and Mat is almost certain that, if the room was even just slightly better lit, he would be able to see it etched on his face, too.

“Yikes. No can do. Pick a different one.”

“What?” His eyebrows knit tighter together then, and Tank Top Boy raises his.

Brendon makes an unsatisfied clicking noise with his mouth when he says, “I already know someone named Mikey, and he’s been around longer.”

The Way brothers have lived in town practically forever, and although Gerard graduated two years ago, leaving Mikey by himself, they still have a bit of a legacy as brothers. Gerard took the drama department by storm during his tenure at Pascack Hills, while Mikey kept things running things smoothly behind scenes, wrangling the tech crew; Gerard had also been a favorite of the fine arts department. The cherry on top of the whole situation was that they were both musicians. In fact, they did a little bit of _everything_ , and it made at least a few people around school very happy.

Unfortunately, the new Mikey doesn’t look very happy when he says, “So what?”

“Can’t know two Mikeys.” Brendon’s logic isn’t exactly infallible.

He’s reluctant to say, “Uh— Michael, then. I guess.”

“Calum,” Tank Top Boy says, and Mat thinks he can see him sizing Brendon up. _At least if he swung at him_ , Mat thinks, _it’d be distracting_. He misses the curly-haired boy’s name while taking a swig from his bottle of Cuervo, but he finds that he doesn’t really care very much. The only thing he can focus on his _BrianBrianBrian_ , and whatever he’s doing—or, in all likelihood, just _imagining_ doing—with that girl. He can already tell he’s not thinking clearly, but it doesn’t make much difference to him.

As the burn slides down his throat, he can’t help but think it’s going to be a long night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ty for reading! if you haven’t found this via my twitter, i’m over at @summrshandy


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